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For the past 20 years, the roughly 450 families that live in Vila Autódromo, a low-income community in western Rio de Janeiro, have been fighting off eviction.

First, in the early 90s, they were told they had to leave because they posed “environmental and aesthetic harm” to the city of Rio and because they had built their homes on environmentally protectedlands. This was right around the time that high luxury buildings started emerging in the surrounding Barra da Tijuca neighborhood.

Next, after a period of heavy rain and flooding, they were told they had to leave because they had built their homes on environmentally hazardouslands.

Maria da Penha and her children on the remnants of their home – Rio/2007 {Marcelo Salles/Fazendo Media}

Then, they were told they had to leave to make way for the infrastructure the city was building to host the Pan-American Games in 2007.

Each time, Vila Autódromo fought back – with legal recourses, community mobilization, protests. So far, these families have been able to stay in their homes.

And just last year, Vila Autódromo learned that it is, once again, on a list of communities set for removal. This time, to make room for stadiums and other sports facilities that Rio plans to build in order to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The forced removal of poor communities and urban slums to make way for more lucrative types of real estate and development on coveted city lands is not a new phenomenon in Brazil, nor is it exclusive to sports megaevents. However, megaevents in general – and sports megaevents in particular – present a uniquely complex and challenging set of conditions. Here are some of them:

Challenge #1: Love for football vs the rights of the poor

“How you can one be against the World Cup in Brazil, the country of football?” The question was posed to me by a taxi driver in Rio. As you may have heard, football is really popular in Brazil. As a Brazilian, I too carry that pesky gene that makes my heart race and palms sweat whenever the national team enters the field for a World Cup game.

The fact that the World Cup is being hosted in Brazil again after 60 years is an enormous source of excitement, enthusiasm, patriotism. On the day the announcement was made, thousands of people gathered in public places like Copacabana beach to watch the broadcast live on enormous screens – the party afterwards lasted for hours. President Lula and football legend Pelé cried. The euphoria is exacerbated by local authorities and by predominant media outlets like TV Globo, which constantly reiterate the pride and honor of hosting such an event – Rio is finally, as Professor Sassia Sasken would note, a global city! At first glance, there really is very little room to bring up anything other than that, or at least that’s how it seems.

Challenge #2: ‘States of exception’ to protect the ‘rights’ of games

FIFA and the IOC often require host countries to enact special legislation for the event that can override existing laws and protections by, for example:

exempting these international entities from legal liability resulting from the games

establishing specific regulations to ensure that only products and services of the event’s corporate sponsors are available throughout the event’s spaces

creating so-called “exclusion zones” around the sports facilities in which the city’s residents cannot circulate

banning public protests or demonstrations in and around the event

Journalists covering the event are also required to “refrain from damaging the image” [of FIFA and the Olympics]. This exceptional legal framework often allows governments and private entities to get away with abuses of power that would normally be punishable by the host country’s existing laws and policies.

It is the rule, not the exception, that megaevents cost a lot of money. Often, they’re financed with public money (despite government promises to the contrary) and, too often, they go over budget. For the 2007 Pan-American Games, for example, the total budget estimate the city of Rio was projecting in the selection stage was R$ 390 million (USD $203 million). The event ended up costing R$ 3.58 billion (USD $2.08 billion), a 1000% increase that was financed primarily with government resources.

For the upcoming World Cup in Brazil, despite new promises that new construction and infrastructure for the games would be paid for by the private sector, the Brazilian Socio-Economic Development Bank (BNDES) has already set aside up to R$ 15 billion in credit lines to finance stadiums and other infrastructure for the megaevents (ironically, nearly half of BNDES’ money comes from the FAT, a compulsory tax on workers’ salaries that is supposed to fund worker assistance programs like unemployment insurance).

Challenge #4: “But megaevents create jobs and stimulate the economy!”

You will hear this a lot when governments are selling the idea of hosting a megaevent. However, different studies have shown that, time after time, poor communities rarely benefit – the jobs created are often poor quality, temporary, dangerous. Communities forcibly evicted usually end up living in worse conditions – farther from the city centers that are home to greater employment options, schools, hospitals. Meanwhile, the greatest benefactors are the private investors that hold broadcasting rights to the events, other corporate sponsors, construction companies, and real estate developers – sectors whose interests overlap sometimes too comfortably with those of politicians and other publicly elected officials.

By privileging select economic interests over the rights of low-income communities, megaevents threaten the Right to the City by making urban spaces less accessible to the poor and more exclusive and luxurious to the rich. Neighborhoods become more expensive, real estate speculation profits, and the poorer segments are pushed farther and farther to the outskirts of the urban perimeters.

Brazilian civil society unites to take on the challenge

One thing is certain: The World Cup and Olympics are happening in Brazil, there is no turning back. The challenge now is ensuring the full protection of rights in the lead up to the events, as well as during and after. The challenge is also ensuring that resources spent on these events leave real and tangible positive legacies for the population as a whole, and that the “sharing of the benefits” actually happens for the collective majority and not for a select minority.

How WITNESS fits in

As part of our global campaign on Forced Evictions in the Name of Development, WITNESS is working with the Habitat International Coalition in Latin America and national networks in Brazil to map strategic opportunities for using video for advocacy at the local, national and regional levels in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. We’ll be posting new updates, videos, and interviews here in the coming months so stay tuned for more on this campaign. In the meantime, if you know of examples in which video and other new media tools were used to protect rights during megaevents, let us know in the comments field below!

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{For their contributions to this post, a huge thanks to Inalva Mendes Brito from Vila Autódromo, Regina Ferreira and Benedito Barbosa from Fórum Nacional da Reforma Urbana, Lorena Zárate from the Habitat International Coalition, Special Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik and her amazing team, Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior from Plataforma Dhesca, Erick Omena, Christopher Gaffney, Guilherme Marques (Soninho), Julia Moretti, and all the participants of the “Megaevents: Urban Impacts and Human Rights Violations” Seminar that took place in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 8-9 2010}

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